It was a silent, intense ride for the first hour. We were moving faster than we would have if Cy and Webb were on the same horse but we weren’t moving as fast Cy wanted to. His arm was stiff as he pulled on the reins and worked Edgar through the thick gathering of trees we were foraging through. I couldn’t see any kind of actual trail markers but figured that was a good thing since we were supposed to be staying under the radar. When he wasn’t maneuvering the lead horse, he was holding his arm close to his side and favoring it like I was doing with my wrist, making me think he was hurting more than he let on.
Webb was also barely hanging in there. More than once his loose hold on my waist had slipped and I’d had to stop to help him readjust in the saddle as he listed precariously off to one side or the other. His skin was getting paler and paler, plus he was sweating like he had the flu. It was uncomfortably close quarters but we kept moving and he never fully let go of me, even if it was very clear he wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and drift away on the pain and discomfort contorting his face.
“So, you want to tell me what you boys are really doing up here and why you’re armed to the teeth for a typically uneventful trail ride?” Cy’s gravelly voice broke the silence and Grady’s heavy sigh followed.
“My real name is Grady Miller and he is Webb Bryant. I’m with . . . the DEA . . . was with the DEA.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “My partner, Wyatt Bryant, was assigned a case up here a couple of months ago. He was doing recon on some big growing operations that were rumored to have moved into the Wyoming territory a few months ago. As the senior agent, I was stuck cleaning up a mess at the border, so our boss sent Wyatt in alone thinking it would be an easy observe and report mission.” Webb’s arm tightened around my waist which made me suck in my breath.
“I called Grady because even when he went undercover, Wyatt always checked in with me to let me know what was going on. We’re all each other has. So, when I didn’t hear from my brother, I was worried something went wrong. Grady tried to get his boss to cut him loose from his case at the border after getting my call and when the higher-ups wouldn’t agree, he quit and flew up here to try and find my brother on his own.” Webb’s voice was weak but the worry for his sibling was clear in every word he struggled to get out.
“Are you with the DEA as well?” He snorted at my question and it made my hair move.
He bit out a firm, “Hell no,” at the same time Grady barked out a sharp laugh full of incredulity.
“Webb and Wyatt Bryant couldn’t be any more opposite. Wyatt was young when he joined the agency, Webb was even younger when he did his first stint in the slammer, but the boys are close and they are like family to me. I couldn’t get a bead on Wyatt anywhere up here, too much open space, and too many people who wouldn’t give an out of towner the time of day. There was still no word from Wyatt and we were desperate. Webb was the one who came up with the idea to take a trail ride into the mountains and play tourist. We were hoping we would come across something, anything that might point to where Wyatt got off to, or maybe we would run across someone out here who may have seen him.” He cleared his throat again and shot a look over his shoulder at the man riding behind me. “We don’t know that the body recovered from the river was his, Webb. I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes. You brother is a damn good agent.”
The man behind me made a noise low in his throat and shifted. He was burning up and shivering at the same time. His voice was thin with pain and weak when he spoke into the back of my head. “I told him a thousand times he needed a different job. He was never home, and every time he got a new assignment, it seemed to be more dangerous than the one before it.”
“Some people are just wired to be heroes, I think.” I wasn’t one of them but I was pretty sure the man leading us through the forest without saying a word about how hurt he was or how worried he had to be about his brothers was one of them.
“Wyatt was always too busy trying to save the rest of the world that he forgot to worry about someone saving him.” Webb sounded like he was convinced the body Sutton told us about belonged to his brother.
“So, you’re an ex-con?” Cy’s voice lashed out angry and pointed. I couldn’t see his face but I had no trouble imagining his thunderous expression. He wasn’t the kind of man who took being lied to and deceived in stride, especially when those lies had dangerous effects on the people he cared about and the business he had built from the ground up.
I felt Webb nod behind me. “I’ve done some time, mostly back when I was a kid and couldn’t figure out what my purpose was. Wyatt always walked the straight and narrow, was a straight-A student, played football, and was accepted to several top tier colleges. I didn’t have any of that going for me so I rebelled, got messed up in some stupid shit, made the wrong kind of friends, and paid the price for it. Now, I’m mostly on the up and up.” I didn’t want to think about what he did when he wasn’t on the up and up.
“You better be on the fucking up and up while you’re that close to my girl.” I’d never been anyone’s girl before, but I kind of loved the idea of being his.
“All I want is to find my brother, and if that is his body sitting in the morgue, then anything that happens afterwards is best kept between me and the mountains.” It was my turn to shiver at the deadly intent in his voice. I didn’t know who he was before the truth bomb and something told me that whoever he was wasn’t someone I wanted to be this close to. He was terrifying in an entirely different way than Cy now that I had hints as to what he was capable of.